Supervisión de las Obras

Ettorre argues that reproduction displays the properties of a social institution, which imposes expectations on members of each sex. Similarly to self-disciplined subjects in a disciplinary institution, these docile individuals apply not only onto themselves but also on others and on their offspring the expectations set by reproduction. In this section, I explore first Françoise’s inability to envisage another role for herself but that of a mother. This posits her future child not only as her cure but also as a response to

counter the social alientation provoked by her sterility. Indeed, I then go on to show that the child provides a solution to both parents, individually and as a couple, and also reveals in the case of Jean the legacy of a dysfunctional childhood environment.

In A ton image, cloning is utilised to counter natural procreative incapacity. For Sawicki, reproductive technologies are ‘disciplinary technologies’ with ‘controlling functions’ which ‘attach[...] women to their identities as mothers’.331 The recourse to cloning as a reproductive technology, and the place of the clone as a therapeutic solution (Sawicki’s ‘specific kin[d] of solution[n]’) reinforce Françoise’s identity as a mother. The recent diagnosis of her sterility (135) metaphorically propels her away from her circle as she cannot fulfil the role of the wife-mother. Her health gradually

degrades in the early days of her menopause, and her parents, who never liked her new husband, seize the opportunity to extract her from her environment. She is taken to a clinic to rest; Jean soon obtains the authorisation to take her back home. Although slightly ashamed with her own consent to enter the clinic, she confesses to her husband: ‘J’ai si peur de te perdre, Jean, si peur… tu comprends?’ (147). Her inability to

procreate and to be a mother, and her fear of losing Jean/her place, pushed her to remove herself from the environment in which she had no function. Reproduction can be explored following the precepts of Foucauldian theory that I have utilised in my chapters so far: it confers subjects a role, a place (location), and envisages the exclusion if the rules are not matched. Françoise’s brief seclusion at the clinic symbolically represents the potential alienation – from the self (I am not a mother; therefore I am a nobody); from the family; from the society of normal healthy individuals – caused by her sterility. Moreover the refuge at the clinic reinforces the medicalisation of sterility and the refusal (inability) to accept her condition. Françoise is ready to accept anything to correct her case when Jean first advances the possibility of a “technical” solution. (140). She does not tremble before the risks which are lesser than those of rejection if her sterility is definitely confirmed.

The consideration of any scientific technique – summed up in Françoise’s words to Jean as ‘Tout ce que tu veux. Tout ce qui est possible’ (140) – expresses the desperation for the desired reproduction, and illustrates a new instance of bodily manipulation. The mother offers her body and her life, and by proxy those of her child, for the

accomplishment of her own wishes. However, it is not only Françoise but of course also Jean who views cloning (and the “object” produced by the technique) as a favourable solution to their problems. The newly discovered sterility profoundly affects Françoise and impacts on her behaviour with Jean and overall physical state. Jean does not tolerate the modifications nor does he recognise his wife anymore (135-36): he is compelled to find a solution to restore her to ‘son état normal’ (137). Following a consultation with Françoise, Michel Cardoze (his superior and fellow gynaecologist) discusses her case with Jean, and confesses: ‘elle me semble très attachée à vous mais elle vous quittera – par peur sans doute que vous la quittiez plus tard – si elle ne peut avoir un enfant de vous… ou d’elle’ (148). In Jean’s narrative, the Letertre couple and marriage depend on the ability of Françoise to fulfil her role as a genitor/mother, and on Jean to provide a medical solution. As anticipated, the child continues to occupy a central position in the perpetuation of Jean and Françoise’s existences. Jean later confesses that ‘Depuis la

naissance de France, mes relations avec Françoise se sont modifiées, à la fois apaisées et étoffées’. If this change in attitudes, felt as ‘cette évolution comme naturelle’ (255) affects both parents and seems unalarming, what might raise the reader’s concern is that France becomes indispensable to the couple, both as individual members, and for their interactions. Jean writes that, ‘Désormais, tout ce que nous partageons passe par France’ (256).

In A ton image, Lambrichs exposes the individual motivations and dangerous consequences lying at the basis of reproduction. Nowhere more blatantly than with cloning and the multiple manipulations it requires is reproduction presented as a selfish enterprise. Jean consents to clone his wife against her knowledge, and is congratulated by Cardoze for his courage. But Jean reacts:

Courageux? En quoi le courage intervenait-il dans ma décision? Je savais bien dans mon for intérieur que si je me lançais dans cette aventure, c’était uniquement par peur

de perdre ma femme et parce que j’espérais, saisissant cette occasion ultime, éviter une

séparation pour moi catastrophique. Mais le vrai courage n’eût-il pas consisté au contraire à renoncer à ce projet? à affronter la réalité et le désespoir de Françoise? (164; my emphasis)

The selfishness lying at the basis of the cloning project is revolting because it is not fully posited as a reproductive method utilised to make Françoise a happy

mother/person once again; it is not born either of the individual desire to perpetuate one’s (genetic) heritage. Reproduction is used by Jean to avert the loss of his wife and as such, it will create a monstrous subject. It moreover reveals Jean’s own complexes and his troubles with reproduction. He is unable to soothe his wife’s distress and to extract her from the paradigm woman-wife-mother. Similarly, he is confined to a role; he considers himself (partly) responsible for their failure to procreate. In a dream where the inconsolable Françoise has just given birth to a plastic doll, ‘une poupée morte’ (133), Jean’s (now deceased) father appears and calls his son ‘un incapable!’ (133). This reminds him of his failure as a son, to which he adds his ‘double culpabilité de jeune mari et de spécialiste, incapable en effet de faire un enfant ou tout au moins de trouver la juste réponse et la solution adéquate au problème soulevé par la stérilité temporaire de Françoise’ (134).

For Jean, cloning enables him to create and control a scientific object. Firstly, medicine can ensure that the child meets the requirements of normality, which also

compose those of a successful reproduction described by Ettorre.332 _{In the Preface to A}

ton image Lambrichs writes that with the recent pathologisation of sterility ‘le médecin

s’est inscrit dans la tradition thérapeutique qui consiste à corriger la nature’ (44), that is for instance to secure women’s procreative abilities, to ‘abort genetically “deficient” fetuses’,333 to pathologise “different” children’s (like Elise’s) conditions. Indeed with a “natural” reproduction Jean does not underestimate the risk of passing on his own family genes (108). Consequently Jean decides to explore ‘les moyens que la science mettait aujourd’hui à notre disposition pour contrecarrer les erreurs eventuelles de la nature’ (106). For Jean, this will allow him to reach success and “perfection”, as a scientist and a husband. Françoise has just given birth and questions Jean about their daughter: ‘Comment est-elle? […] Tout va bien?’ And Jean replies: ‘Elle est parfaite! […] Exactement comme toi: parfaite!’ (193). If Françoise’s questions assuredly signify a mother anxious to be reassured on the health of her newborn baby, contrarily, Jean’s reply translates the satisfaction for the achieved control of reproduction. For Jean, France represents firstly his scientific success. Most importantly, France is ‘parfaite’ because she is Françoise’s child “for herself”, she is her ‘compagnon sûr’, which reinstates Françoise’s position as a mother and a wife to Jean, and which highlights Jean’s success as a scientist and as a husband.

The creation and control of a clone of his wife moreover allows Jean to envisage the possession of Françoise’s entire life. Françoise is described in the novel as obsessed with the age gap between Jean and herself, which the former does not consider as a barrier to their common lives to share. And he explains, ‘le caractère insensé des ces douze années d’état civil qui, selon elle, menaçaient de nous séparer. Est-ce son

obsession qui, avec le temps, m’a contaminé à mon insu? A lire l’histoire à rebours, on pourrait le croire’ (89). Indeed Jean goes back in time and erases not only those

awkward twelve years but also all those he did not live with Françoise, those before he met her. France allows him to prolong time (131), and to encapsulate the entirety of her mother’s life though the reflected existence of Françoise. His following confession reveals a profound (and worrying) confusion between France and Françoise, ‘J’allais connaître Françoise enfant, la voir grandir, faire partie de ses souvenirs depuis toujours. La vie recommencerait à zéro. Et je serais le seul homme de sa vie’ (163). Throughout the novel, Jean is often confounded by Françoise and France’s similarities. At the end of the story, he mixes them up one more time and ends up having sex with and killing

332 _{Ettorre, p. 3.}

France, aged only twelve (389, 409). Jean has symbolically bridged the twelve year gap that separated him from his wife; it could be argued that this was France’s role, that her lifespan was meant to reflect the age difference between her “parents”. Indeed, Jean speaks of “resuscitating” his wife’s youth, beauty and love for him (135). This creation, which Lambrichs calls ‘[un] pur objet de satisfaction narcissique’, is for the author the absolute definition of monstrosity. ‘Ce qui me paraît monstrueux’, Lambrichs writes in the Preface, ‘c’est de considérer un être humain non pas comme un sujet à part entière auquel on ouvrirait l’avenir […], mais comme un objet ou comme un autre, préexistant.’ (38-9). Lambrichs identifies the origin of monstrosity in the limitation of a human subject’s possibilities, and in the desire to replicate what already exists (either via the use of cloning, or in the repetition of the parents’ own desires). In accordance with Lambrichs’s words, and following my exploration of Elise and France, I will argue in the final parts of this chapter that the monstrous subject is born of the constrictions of reproduction. Moreover, as these expectations arise from parental desires, I will explore Jean’s own difficulty to position himself in relation to the two female characters (which makes France abject for Jean), and his failure to allow France the straightforward role of daughter and the place of a human subject (resulting in the creation and destruction of the monstrous character).